[ LETTER ]

Tue, Mar 05, 2013 - Page 8

A-bian’s trials a disgrace

One of the hottest political topics surrounding the news media in Taiwan nowadays is whether former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) should be given medical parole from prison on the grounds of his failing health.

The fervor has been accentuated by a short video recently released by a member of the Control Yuan. In the video, we see a man walking with difficulty, handicapped, stuttering and with other debilitated motor skills.

We cannot believe this was once a two-term president of Taiwan, who was willing to say and do things that pissed off a former president of the US, and won himself notoriety as a troublemaker and other expletives unfit to be published.

The irony about Chen Shui-bian’s legal battle is that it would have been thrown out of court and ended long ago when Chen was still healthy had it occured in the US.

Of all the dirty maneuverings, either covert or overt, conducted by members of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division throughout the trials concerning Chen and the subsequent charges of corruption and graft, none is as nefarious as coaching some of the key witnesses to perjure themselves to secure a conviction.

During one of the trial proceedings, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) overtly sought to influence the judges in charge by telling them that rendering a verdict in favor of Chen would conflict with the public’s expectations.

This shocking and unabashed disfranchising of judicial integrity in Taiwan has totally eroded the people’s confidence in its judicial system.

A rotten to the core judicial infrastructure, which can be manipulated at will, undoubtedly alarmed the British man [Zain Dean] who recently ruffled legal feathers in Taiwan by escaping the clutches of the judiciary by illegal means.

Such is the disgraceful state of the judicial system in Taiwan and there is not much hope of Chen being granted medical parole when the president himself, a graduate of Harvard Law School, takes the lead in making law and order a travesty.